A crafty Grandma who knits, sews, crochets and cooks.

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I like a lot of pages on Facebook, to begin with it was something I didn’t see the point of, but now I’m starting to catch offers from it. I found a really good one from Purl City Yarns where they were giving away a free set of crochet hooks with every order over £15! I couldn’t miss that one as I’m short on the sizes before 3mm and above 5mm. Now I’m good. This offer is still running until the end of May, their shop is here if you want to order. And they have free postage for orders above £25.

At the top you can see my free 12 pack crochet hooks 2mm -8mm! They’re aluminum, but I like those.

I’m going to show you all the goodies I got!

This is a shawl pin by Symfonie costing only £3.30. Since my daughter started wearing a shawl and saying how comfortable it was I thought I’d wear one of my mum’s old shawls. She was right, they’re great for around the house, my only complaint is that it will slip off sometimes, happily this shawl pin stops it and looks pretty!

I’ve also got a pack of candy love hearts and some wool washing liquid for free. The sweets were yummy and my son enjoyed them, but I’ve not yet used the washing liquid. I’m probably going to try it then if I like it buy one for me and one for Andi.

The washing liquid is called Euclan, it’s a washing liquid for delicates no rinse lavender fragrance. I’ve only got a 5ml sachet, and I need to find something woolen to try it on.

Andi has been going through a sock phase, which is great! I’ve decided to profit from this by asking for my own pair of socks. She told me to buy her the yarn to do it, well, here’s one of the ones I chose. It’s Lang Jawroll, Magic Degrade, shade 0050 Macaw, 75% wool 25% nylon £7.95 100g ball. 25% nylon is fairly standard for sock wool from what I can tell, as is the price of £6-10. What I liked about this one was the colours! It reminded me a lot of the Katia yarn I got a while back. I will have colourful and warm feet soon.

The other yarn I chose was Lang Millie Colori sock and lace, in shade 90, again it’s 75% wool, 25% nylon. £9.95 for a 100g ball. Still in the standard price for sock yarn, and again the colours are amazing. The photo doesn’t do it justice, and I don’t think I’ll be able to show the full beauty until this is knitted, but it is lovely.

Next are the stitch holders, what’s so special about these? It’s a Clover jumbo double ended stitch holder, They’re £4.20 for a pack of two which I feel is good value and about the same price as the standard safety-pin style stitch holders. I got the 7mm size, but there is a smaller one available.

This is the photo of the double ended stitch holder with a normal safety-pin style stitch holder. It is modern, but flimsy and easily bends so the stitches can fall off. Once it came open in my knitting bag. So I went back to using an antique of my mum’s.

These safety-pin style stitch holders are old and I’m sure they were my mum’s. They do work but you can still only access the stitches from one end. Meaning you need to slip them onto a double-pointed needle and sometimes turn and it’s a lot of faff.
That’s why I got the double-pointed stitch holder! It looked so practical, and it was fairly cheap.

Otherwise, I’m very please with this yarn shop. It’s got a very interesting range of yarns I’ve never heard of, and the fiber contents are all good quality, wool based as far as I could tell. I had a poke through the books to and there is a lot of interesting stuff there. I would recommend this shop to anyone.

The shipping time was great too! I ordered Saturday afternoon and it got to me Tuesday morning!

The current offer is “Free PCY Project Bag when you spend over £50 / Free Crochet Hook Set with orders over £15″

So I will update soon when I’ve tried these goodies out. I will also share a jumper I made recently. For more updates you can check out my Facebook page.

I have been really busy and have now finished my granny square waistcoat! I have worn on several occasions already. It is really useful on cold days, although I am beginning to wish I had used a better quality wool and not just cheap acrylic. The more I knit and crochet the more I hate it. The colours are nice and bright though, but these days wool is bright too, as is cotton.

One granny square. Purple with pink, blue and then more purple

This is my original crochet waistcoat that I based this off. It’s been mine since the 1970’s!!

So what’s the story of my original chrochet waist coat? It’s surprisingly uninteresting, I bought it. It is handmade though! I got it back in the 1970’s, back when music was good and knitting was normal. Back in the days of local woolshops that were within walking distance there was a store near me selling handmade clothing too. They were selling that waistcoat and I really liked it, at the time nobody could crochet in my family so it was buy it or go without. My mum bought it, well she bought the wool because I wanted to choose the colours and the lady made it the same as the others.
Recently though I’ve been thinking it’s a little pale next to all the bright yarn colours in existance now, so I wanted to remake it, the acrylic was more of an experiement; and since it worked I might make another in cotton.

I used a bit of odd stash wool for this, a lot of pink left over from Andi’s clothing in the 1990’s, but I bought the new purple to trim it, although I can’t remember the brand. It came from my favourite online store, Deramores.

Here’s a photo of my wasit coat all crocheted together; I need a photo of me wearing it now.

And this is a sneak peak of my new wool stash!

Sadly I don’t have a photo of me wearing the waistcoat, my son wouldn’t help me out and I’m too old for selfies, but soon I’m hoping to get one.

I’m sorry I’ve not written anything on here for a while. I’m a little unsure about what to write, and then I’ve been busy with crafting. I’ve been meaning to post my recent makes on here for a while, but it becomes a case of “let me finish this one last thing” and then I never update before I start something new.

One of the privileges (or responsibilities, or tasks, or whatever you want to describe it is) of being a grandmother is that you get to, and are expected to, knit for your grandkids. When you’re a mum it’s always the kids begging you to stop, now you’re a grandma your kid is asking for things for her child. Or at least this is my take on things.

Currently I’m working on a blackberry stitch cardigan, it’s plain colours but the stitches look like blackberries, hence the name. However, I keep messing it up, I get tired and I miscount the stitches or something goes wrong and I have to undo it again. Gah!

I’ve also finished a crochet minion hat for Sandy, because I thought they’d like that one. And I’ve done a lot of work around the house too, things are progressing.

Andi got a notebook for christmas, and in this notebook she has (at least) a page of demands. It’s even titled “List of Demands” it’s a mixture of knitting, sewing and crochet for herself, Sandy and sometimes George. Apparently she has a list on her tablet too, but that’s things she’s planning to make.

At last read the list had

Chunky slouchy hat for Andi, with matching scarf. Knitted or crochet.

Sewn dungarees for Sandy.

Sewn shirts for Sandy.

Knitted octopus. (normally she follows this with several exclamation marks!!!)

Crochet minion hat for Sandy.

Crochet Spike hat. (My Little Pony’s cute baby dragon)

Crochet Rainbow Dash hat. (My Little Pony again)

Elf hats for Andi, Sandy, George and myself for winter 2014.

Chunky Cardigan for Andi for autumn 2014.

Beard hats for George and Sandy.

Plush sewn My Little Pony characters.

This list is growing and my list of things I’d like to make is almost non-existent, so I’ve bought some wool to do her things. We did it together over Skype, but it wasn’t the same as going to the wool shop together, and talking with the old woman behind the desk, and faffing about and poking the wool, some things about the internet will never compare.

The haul

I spent around £60 at Deramores. I got free postage meaning it actually works out as cheaper to buy online than to travel to my wool shop, sadly. Before we even looked at anything we worked out what we were actually making up first, we settled on Andi’s hat and scarf with Sandy’s Rainbow Dash set. And a bonus Rainbow Dash hat for Andi.

Wendy Festival Secret Garden

The first wool we picked out was Andi’s, for a chunky scarf and a hat this was probably going to be the most expensive thing. We started off looking at Katia Azteca because we couldn’t find a 100% wool yarn to use. In the end we decided on Wendy Festival wool, in the shade Secret Garden. It’s a lovely, stunning, bright blue, with hints of other colours. I got three balls, and it worked out as roughly £13. Not bad, even if the yarn is 100% acrylic.

Katia Darling shade 201

Andi and I found Katia yarns by accident, but they are amazing with the colours. We found them in Paris, and she made me a hat for Christmas using their Azteca wool. She found this Darling, but it was 4ply. So we decided it could be another hat for Sandy. This was £5, it’s a wool mixture, I’m excited to see this one.

I also bought four balls of King Cole Big Value, a DK acrylic yarn. I choose the shade surf, a lovely bright blue. I’m making a Rainbow Dash hat with it and some odds and sods from my scraps box. This was £2.60 a ball, so around £10.

I bought four patterns, but they’re not that interesting. I’ll share those when my order arrives. And some dinosaur buttons because they stood out to me, and a little book of 20 crochet granny squares.

Granny squares are one of these amazing things because they can make almost anything, blankets, scarfs, jackets, I’ve even seen them used in hats and bags before.

So I’ll be writing again once my £70 wool order arrives, showing off what I’ve made, and opinions about the wool and objects.